George Whitefield at Kingswood

Edward Green

The Kingswood Tabernacle in 2007 viewed from Park Road

From the street, it is difficult to believe
that the large near-derelict edifice in
Park Road, Kingswood on the outskirts
of Bristol, is Grade I listed, or that it bears
testimony to one of the most important figures
in the history of nonconformity in England. Yet,
the Tabernacle building does just that. Dating
from 1741, it was commissioned by the great
18th-century evangelist George Whitefield,
who had first visited the area just two years
earlier. Now in a poor state of repair and almost
completely open to the elements, the Tabernacle
gained some recent notoriety when it featured
in the first series of BBC television’s ‘Restoration’.

The area witnessed the advent of the
Methodist movement, with both Whitefield
and his friend (and later rival) John Wesley
preaching here. Kingswood was a district of
approximately 20 square miles. Although
it lay within the borders of four parishes, it
had no parish church, no school and only one nonconformist place of worship: a small
Baptist church at Hanham, which had been
built in 1714. Close to the commercially
prosperous port of Bristol, the area was largely
populated by coalminers, living and working
in atrocious conditions. Men, women and
children laboured long hours in the mines,
this being just over a hundred years before
Lord Shaftesbury’s moves to ban women
and children from undertaking such work.

THE RISE OF WHITEFIELD

George Whitefield was born in 1714 in
Gloucester, 35 miles to the north of Bristol,
where his father was the owner of the
Bell Inn. There was a history of preachers
in the family, including George’s great
uncle, Rev’d Samuel Whitefield, who was
Rector of Rockhampton near Thornbury,
Gloucestershire. Whitefield’s father died
when George was two years old and for some
years his mother ran the business alone.
A subsequent marriage proved disastrous for
the family business and George, aged 15, had
to abandon his education to assist his family.

Despite this, Whitefield did manage to
get to Oxford at the young age of 17, but as a
servitor. As such he had to act almost as a butler
to a small group of students while carrying out
his studies. It was here that Whitefield met
John and Charles Wesley as the men prepared
to become Anglican priests. They had formed
a university club called Holy Club, whose
members met for biblical study and discussion
as well as prayer. Following ordination in 1736,
Whitefield travelled to Georgia where John
Wesley was already carrying out missionary
work, initially aimed at the Native Americans.
Georgia was then a young colony which had
been founded only a handful of years before.

These young men developed the art of open-air preaching, following the example
of Welshman Howell Harris. In areas such
as Kingswood there was no church building
available to a potential congregation and even if
there had been, a church would not have been
large enough to accommodate them. More than
this, however, the appeal of preaching to an
audience in the open air was one of addressing
the people on their own territory: people who
may well have initially felt alienated from the
established church. Whitefield’s enthusiasm for
open air preaching is clear from his journals: 'Blessed be God that the ice is now broke, and
I have now taken the field'. Echoing Hosea 4:6,
he added 'pulpits are denied, and the poor
colliers ready to perish for lack of knowledge'.

Whitefield first visited Kingswood
in the spring of 1739. On Wednesday
21 February he preached to 2,000 in the
open air, two days later to between 4,000
and 5,000, then on the Sunday an estimated
10,000 people came to hear him preach. As
another journal entry of the time reveals:

At four I hastened to Kingswood. At a
moderate computation there were about ten
thousand people… All was hush when I began:
the sun shone bright, and God enabled me
to preach for an hour with great power, and
so loudly that all, I was told, could hear me.

His popularity soon spread from the
Bristol area to other parts of Gloucestershire
and into Worcestershire and Wales. On
Monday 2 May 1739, John Wesley followed
his example and preached for the first time
in the open air in England. On the evening of
the previous day, Whitefield had previewed
Wesley’s appearance, announcing that he
was ‘unworthy to unloose’ Wesley’s shoes.

Whitefield preached in Bristol and
Kingswood for seven weeks. He then left
this work in the hands of John Wesley, while
he undertook preaching engagements in
Wales, the Midlands and London before
sailing to Georgia. Before his departure the
local coal miners had collected £20 towards
a school for their children and they promised
a further £40. This sum enabled Whitefield
to commence building in the town.

Two engravings of Whitefield's tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road, London, destroyed in World War II

THE SCHISM

The Kingswood school was the first building
constructed for Whitefield in the town. A
young man called John Cennick was appointed
as the school’s first teacher by John Wesley.
Cennick’s family background was Quaker and
he worked with both Whitefield and Wesley,
but he fell out with the latter and eventually
joined the Moravian faith, constructing the
first Moravian Church in Kingswood. His, and
also Whitefield’s theological differences with
the Wesleys eventually led to the confiscation
of the original school building by John Wesley,
and a second Kingswood school was
subsequently built by Whitefield and Cennick.

Whitefield, Cennick and the Wesleys’
disagreement was over the fundamental
theological ideas of Calvinism versus
Arminianism. The Wesleys favoured
Arminianism which was also the position of
the established church. Whitefield and Cennick
were disposed towards Calvinism. Nevertheless,
Whitefield and the Wesleys still had respect
for each other: indeed, John Wesley preached
a sermon in Whitefield’s Tottenham Court
Road Tabernacle, following Whitefield’s death.

In March 1741 Whitefield returned from
America and by June of that year had decided
to build a meeting room in Kingswood, writing
to Cennick and enclosing an initial £20. Work
commenced almost immediately, and Cennick
laid the foundation stone on 18 June. This
building, which opened early the following
year, was the first phase of the tabernacle, and
forms the central section of the now threatened
tabernacle building. It was tripled in size
in 1802, and was extended again in 1830.

George Whitefield died on 30th September
1770 while on his seventh visit to America.
He had been preaching in towns in New
England for two months before his death
and gave his last sermon on the day he died
from an open window at the house of a
friend at Newbury Port. He is buried beneath
the pulpit of the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newbury Port, Massachusetts.

THE REMAINING ARCHITECTURAL LEGACY

Whitefield’s churches were known as
tabernacles because of their intended
temporary nature. This alludes to both the
tabernacle of the Israelites in the wilderness
(Exodus, 25:25) and the fact that Whitefield
was careful not to be seen forming a church
which was in competition with the Church
of England. This was at a time when the
Methodist movement was still within the
Church of England. (It did not separate until
four years after John Wesley’s death.)

Other tabernacles set up by Whitefield
included a tabernacle at Penn Street in Bristol
founded in 1753 and tabernacles at Dursley
and Rodborough, also in Gloucestershire.
Some financial assistance came from the
Countess of Huntingdon, a rival nonconformist
to Wesley. She had appointed Whitefield
as a chaplain. Whitefield’s converts usually
joined existing nonconformist churches – in England the Congregationalists,
in Scotland the Presbyterians.

The first of Whitefield’s tabernacles in the
capital dated from the early 1740s. Situated at
Moorfields, the original wooden structure was
replaced by a more permanent building in 1752.
The impressive building had a characteristic
lantern roof and could seat up to 4,000
people. All but one of Whitefield’s tabernacles
eventually became part of the Congregational
Church (formerly the Independent Church).

Another Whitefield tabernacle in London,
again dating from the 1750s was situated in
Tottenham Court Road. Its foundation stone
was laid on 10 May 1756 and Whitefield
himself preached at the Tabernacle’s opening
in November of the following year.

It was the Tottenham Court Road
tabernacle which was to gain the poignant
notoriety of being hit by a German V2 rocket
during the Second World War. The building
was destroyed on Palm Sunday 1945, by what
was reputedly the last V2 to strike London. Its
site is now occupied by a smaller replacement
chapel opened in 1957, 201 years after the
foundation of the original building. Now the
American Church in London, the building
(at the corner of Goodge Street) is called
the George Whitefield Memorial Church. It
has been described as the most significant
memorial to Whitefield anywhere in the world.

The mid-19th century Masters (Congregational) Church at Kingswood

THE KINGSWOOD TABERNACLE SAGA

After Whitefield’s death, nonconformists
continued to worship in the vicinity of his
Tabernacle building for over 200 years, and the
tabernacle was listed as far back as 1951. Today,
however, the site presents a sorry spectacle
of ruins, derelict buildings, and overgrown
open spaces. There is nothing to indicate its
importance to English religious history. Gone is
the bronze plaque from the side of the building
which once proudly announced: ‘This building
was erected by George Whitefield BA and
John Cennick, AD 1741. It was Whitefield’s
first Tabernacle, the oldest existing memorial
to his great share in the 18th century revival.’

The Whitefield Building Preservation
Trust was founded over 10 years ago with
the aim of restoring and finding viable uses
for this small complex comprising of the
remains of the Tabernacle itself, the Masters
Church, the Chapel House and a graveyard.

Since the original school building (taken
by Wesley) was demolished in 1919 and
Cennick’s Moravian Church building, which
dated from the 1750s, has gone too, this makes
the Tabernacle the last remaining Kingswood
building connected with the 18th-century
religious revival. Its Grade I listing reflects its historical significance.

The picturesque mid-19th-century church
building on the same site was designed by
Henry Masters and served nonconformists
in Kingswood until dwindling congregations
forced its closure a quarter of a century ago. Its
attractive spire and west window tracery are
in marked contrast to the somewhat austere
Whitefield Tabernacle building, now on
English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk register.

The recent history of the site has not been
without controversy. The United Reformed
Church recently sold the sizable plot to a
developer and plans were submitted in late 2006
to restore the Tabernacle and convert it into a
restaurant. Part of the application includes the
conversion of the Masters Church and Chapel
House into 19 and six apartments respectively,
for which a service road and car parking is
proposed through the disused burial ground.

Standing as the most lasting memorial to
a man who has been described as ‘the most
controversial preacher of the 18th century,
and perhaps the greatest extemporaneous
orator in the history of the English church’,
the Kingswood Tabernacle still awaits an
uncertain future. Its conservation raises
questions about suitable uses for redundant
churches, as well as tight restrictions regulating
changes of use to Grade I listed buildings.
It is hoped that the structure will not be left
to decay for another quarter of a century.